The election of pro-Russian President Igor Dodon in 2016 was made possible by his de facto campaigning with Putin and has resulted in Moldova turning away from the EU and NATO and toward Russia.

The pro-Russian Moldovan Orthodox Church and various NGOs are both vehicles for promoting Moscow’s worldview and organizations for Moldovan politicians like Dodon to signal their closeness with the Kremlin.

Given Moldova's complicated history, divided identity, and meager defense capabilities, the country is extremely vulnerable to Russian intervention.

The Russian-supported separatist enclave of Transnistria has threatened Moldova's stability since the country's independence in 1992, and Transnistrian and Russian forces in the region pose serious security risks.

Ironically, an outright military intervention is unlikely because Russia can use several nonmilitary tools to influence political developments in the country more covertly.

Sudanese refugees hunted in EgyptSudanese refugees in Egypt refuse to go back to Sudan, where they fear the National Intelligence and Security Service could be waiting around the corner to harm them or their families.

Turkey’s military suffered its worst day yet in the two-week offensive in Afrin, Syria, when at least seven soldiers were killed and a tank was destroyed in the fighting, official Turkish news outlets reported on Sunday. - New York Times

Russian-sponsored Syrian peace talks ignore key opposition demandsRussian-sponsored peace talks on Syriaended on Tuesday amid squabbles and the heckling of Russia’s foreign minister. The 1,600 participants at the Sochi congress stressed in their final statement the need to preserve Syria’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence. The statement also called for free elections, but made no mention of Syrian refugees’ participation in the election, a key demand of the opposition, which boycotted the talks, nor any reference to President Bashar al-Assad's fate. The convention resulted in the creation of a committee to draft a new Syrian Constitution. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the panel “will include those groups that were not attending the [Sochi] peace conference.” Some delegates interrupted Lavrov's address to the event on Tuesday, however, accusing Moscow of killing civilians.Read More​

Syrian Kurdish forces moving toward Turkish borderThe US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), have started redeploying forces in northern Syria toward the border with Turkey following Ankara’s offensive in Afrin, a US official said Tuesday. Pentagon spokesman Adrian Rankine-Galloway told the Turkish daily Hurriyet that “these movements of forces are not conducted under the direction or with the support of the [US-led] coalition.” Read More​

Christopher Kozak writes: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies in Russia and Iran are preparing to launch imminent combat operations in violation of the de-escalation zone in southern Syria brokered by the U.S., Russia, and Jordan in July 2017. - Institute for the Study of War

Barak Barfi writes: On January 20, Turkey began an operation to clear Kurdish forces from the northwest Syrian border pocket of Afrin. Despite Ankara's justifications, the operation risks triggering an open-ended war between allies, neutralizing gains made against the Islamic State (IS), and emboldening America's adversaries in Tehran, Moscow, and Damascus. Washington should move quickly to contain the fallout while offering its allies a soft landing; otherwise it may find itself sidelined in Syria. - Washington Institute

Iran's 'Gray Zone' Strategy in Syria​Syria is shifting from being an active conflict zone to a “gray zone,” an area of ambiguity between peace and war. Iran is taking advantage of this development by extending its influence through the war-torn country. How can the United States push back? RAND's Colin Clarke explains.Read more »

Iran, the Hollow HegemonBy Shlomo Ben-Ami, The Strategist (ASPI): “Israeli and Arab leaders have spent years warning of the rise of an Iranian-led Shia empire covering much of the Middle East. With Iran now linked to the Mediterranean through a land corridor that extends through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, ”

How the U.S. and EU Can Thwart Iranian Missile ProgramsBy Sydney Freedberg, Breaking Defense: “the CR prohibits the Pentagon from starting new activities — which is exactly what a growing young program like the B-21 needs to do. “The program is going into the EMD phase (Engineering & Manufacturing Development),” Mahnken said. “You’re starting to ramp up engineering, you’re starting to ramp up manufacturing….Those are new activities….You need to hire people, you need to build stuff. Can you do that under a CR? Probably not.””

The U.S. Has to Back Turkey in Syria By James Stavridis, Bloomberg View: “The Kurds are valuable allies in the fight against Islamic State, but America's higher priority is keeping Turkey a NATO ally.”

US-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria on Thursday called on the government of President Bashar al-Assad to help them fight back against Turkey’s assault on Afrin. The request comes as the Donald Trump administration has done little to restrain Ankara’s intervention against the People’s Protection Units, which Turkey considers a terrorist group. Further complicating matters, Turkey is believed to have gotten a green light for its offensive from Russia, a key Assad ally that controls the airspace in the area.

Matthew Brodsky writes: In essence, the shorter and non-diplomatic version is as follows: Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad is disgraceful and weak and dependent on Iran. America didn’t insert itself into Syria so that Assad could re-create the same mess that spawned ISIS and the civil war. Nor did the U.S. work with allies to crush ISIS just so Iran could inherit the state. - The Weekly Standard

Washington's Weak Hand to Play in Syria By Rodger Shanahan, the interpreter: “Governments are urging restraint on all sides, but the reality is that no one will come to the aid of the Kurds, just as they didn't last year when the Iraqi government seized back control of Kirkuk after the Iraqi Kurds' ill-advised referendum on independence. In the world of realpolitik, sovereignty always trumps friendship.”​

What’s Next for the U.S. In Syria?By Daniel DePetris, RealClearDefense: “Scholars and analysts who consult with the Trump administration are recommending the U.S. switch some of its focus to combating Iran’s considerable influence in Syria.”

Steven A. Cook writes: Through 94 years of independence, Turkish leaders have made clear that the nightmare of post-World-War-I dismemberment can never repeat itself. But it has, despite their best efforts—albeit in an updated form, involving the United States and Syrian territory that the Kurds call Rojava, or Western Kurdistan. This explains why, last weekend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered his army to attack a district in northwestern Syria called Afrin. - The Atlantic

With airstrikes and artillery fire, Turkey on Saturday defied U.S. appeals and opened a long-anticipated offensive on ­Afrin, an enclave in Syria for Kurdish militias backed by the United States. - Washington Post

Turkish troops crossed the Syrian border into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on Sunday morning, beginning a ground assault against American-allied militias there, as the first accounts of casualties emerged amid rising international criticism of Turkey’s military action. - New York TimesTurkey's military incursion into northern Syria against Kurdish militia opens yet another front in the seven-year Syrian conflict, and risks giving ISIS breathing room just as it was being suffocated. - CNN

A missile fired across the border from Syria hit the Turkish border town of Reyhanli on Sunday, killing a Syrian national and wounding 32 people, broadcaster NTV reported the town’s mayor as saying. - Reuters​Jennifer Cafarella, Elizabeth Teoman, and Bradley Hanlon write: Turkey’s operations threaten to provoke a widening Turkish-Kurdish war that could unravel the U.S. stabilization effort in eastern Syria, place U.S. service members in Manbij at risk, and force the U.S. to reconsider support for the YPG. - Institute for the Study of War

Erdogan: "We don’t care what they say"Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan finally delivered on his threat to attack against towns in the Kurdish-controlled enclave in Syria. The timing of the assault, dubbed Operation Olive Branch, followed an announcement by a military spokesman for the US-led global coalition against the Islamic State to build a 30,000-strong border force under the command of veteran Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters, and a green light from Russia, which may support a short Turkish incursion to facilitate a role for Syrian government forces in the north.

As we wrote in this column in August, “Turkey’s preoccupation with beating back Syrian Kurdish control in northern Syria could open the door to some type of accommodation with Damascus.” Of little consequence in Erdogan’s decision were either the carefully chosen words of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in rolling out the Trump administration’s new Syria strategy Jan. 17, which acknowledged the “concerns of our NATO ally Turkey,” or the urgent clarifications about the border force by both Tillerson, who met with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu the next day, and the Department of Defense.

In a sign of how low US-Turkey relations have sunk, Erdogan replied to his “NATO ally,” the United States, “We don't care what they say. … They will learn how wrong it is to trust a terror organization." Ankara considers the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which make up the bulk of the SDF, as an arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which both the United States and Turkey have labeled a terrorist organization. The Turkish president believes that the United States has reneged on earlier commitments to contain YPG expansion in northern Syria, along the Turkish border.

Fehim Tastekin explains that the announcement of the border force, in Turkey’s view, “means the US-YPG partnership will not end with the collapse of the Islamic State (IS), as Ankara had hoped. In his last phone conversation with President Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was led to believe that US assistance to the YPG would end. According to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Trump told Erdogan, 'I gave instructions. No more weapons will be delivered.' Referring to the phone call, the White House said that Trump had informed Erdogan of 'pending adjustments to the military support provided to our partners on the ground in Syria.' The United States then assured the YPG in their private talks that they would not leave the region until a political solution was found and the BSF [US-backed Syrian Border Security Force] was set up.”

What is perhaps most telling is that the final arbiter of Erdogan’s decision was not Washington, but Moscow. Tillerson’s policy speech seemed a day late and a dollar short on the gravity of US-Turkish differences over the SDF. US objectives in Syria, including stabilization of towns liberated from IS, return of refugees and containment of Iran, to name a few, will all be compromised or complicated without coordination with Turkey and Russia.

In Ankara’s score, the time for speeches and talking had long passed. So while Tillerson made his appeal to Cavusoglu in Vancouver, the meeting that day in Moscow that really mattered was between Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and Hakan Fidan, the Turkish head of the National Intelligence Organization. Russia soon after began withdrawing its forces from the areas targeted by Turkish forces. A statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed “concern” about the situation, and called on the parties “to show mutual restraint.” Meanwhile, Russian, Iranian and Turkish diplomats met to prepare for the Syrian National Dialogue Congress to be held in Sochi Jan. 30.

Metin Gurcan’s analysis was ahead of the curve on the motivations and possible consequences for the Turkish operation. “If Ankara seeks Moscow's approval, it might get it, because Russia badly needs a military victory for domestic political consumption,” Gurcan writes. “In that case, Moscow might give the go-ahead for Turkey to launch a brief operation with limited targets. Moscow might also insist that Turkey hand over Afrin’s governance to [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad after keeping Turkish troops in the area for a short time.”

While US-Turkey relations are in free fall, Russia-Turkey coordination over Syria is not without friction, including the Kremlin’s disappointment with Ankara’s fulfilling its obligations in Idlib, which was the subject of this column last week. Gurcan concludes, “In 2017, Moscow had offered Ankara an opportunity to clear the area: Let the radical elements in Idlib leave the city center unharmed or unarmed. But Ankara was late in responding, and its field performance did not meet Russian expectations. It's therefore possible that — dissatisfied with the Turkish performance — Russia gave the green light to the Syrian army to launch attacks north of Idlib. In other words, Russia believes that Ankara has been stalling in fulfilling its promises to Moscow that it will reshape the Sunni opposition west of the Euphrates to become a coherent actor and separate Sunni armed groups from the radical groups affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. An Afrin operation could endanger the sensitive arrangements Russia tried so hard to achieve west of the Euphrates.”

In that same August column, “If no sanctions relief is forthcoming [from the United States], Putin will have little interest in carrying Trump’s water at the expense of his regional ties. Russia might therefore undertake an outwardly passive and inwardly supportive role that allows the regional parties to take the initiative against the Syrian Kurds or others. Moscow might see that as the winning hand. For the United States, the Russian card should be played carefully, with full appreciation that Tehran, Ankara and Damascus will all have their say.”

Syrian violence escalates in de-escalation zonesUN officials are warning of the impact of Syrian government attacks on Eastern Ghouta and Idlib, which are considered “de-escalation zones” according to the Astana process, led by Russia, Iran and Turkey.

"Since mid-November 2017," according to the UN News Centre, "the estimated 393,000 people in eastern Ghouta have been subjected to airstrikes, shelling and bombardment on an almost daily basis by Government forces and their allies. Rockets fired by armed opposition groups in eastern Ghouta into residential areas of Damascus have reportedly further aggravated the situation. In southern Idlib and northern rural Hama, where fighting between government forces and armed opposition groups — which control a majority of the Idlib governorate — has escalated since December, over 200,000 civilians have been displaced and numerous people have been killed."

Ahmed al-Ahmad, the Syria media coordinator of the Turkish Red Crescent, told Khaled al-Khateb, “The wave of displacement started in early December 2017 and got more disastrous since the first day of 2018. The Red Crescent has established two camps to accommodate the displaced: the You Are Not Alone Camp, which can accommodate up to 5,000 people, and a second one that can accommodate up to 20,000 displaced people. The two camps are located near Bab al-Hawa in the north of Idlib. … We are planning on building more camps near the Syrian-Turkish border in northern Idlib to accommodate the vast number of displaced people, estimated by the Red Crescent at more than 300,000, mostly children and women.”

Local council seizes property of IS families​Khateb reports separately that “the local council in the city of Akhtarin, in the northern Aleppo countryside, announced Jan. 2 that it would confiscate the property of people and families who had joined the ranks of the Islamic State (IS) or fought alongside regime forces. The decision took immediate effect. The money generated will go toward the orphans created by the war and their caregivers. … The council's decision is not likely to be imitated by other areas in the countryside of Aleppo, given its conflict with Sharia provisions. This is the case even though the considerable numbers of people from the cities and towns in the area of Operation Euphrates Shield who fought with IS and the regime are yet to return, and perhaps never will, most likely out of fear."

Terrorist group Boko Haram has lost most of the territory it claimed as a “caliphate” within Nigeria back in 2014. But group is still proving deadly to Nigerian troops and civilians from its remaining safe havens, and it seems to be positioning itself to take terrorism global, with links to Al Qaida and ISIS.

While the Nigerian military may still be able to make headway in ejecting Boko Haram from the last of its strongholds, the state will continue to struggle to control the country’s vast northeast territory.

Boko Haram has shown that it is not dependent on holding territoryand that it can shift fluidly between conventional, i.e. army-like tactics, and unconventional guerilla and terrorism-style tactics. That requires a nimble response from the Nigerian government in Abuja, which had relied on conventional military operations to drive Boko Haram out

The largest development organisation in the Muslim world, the Islamic Development Bank, is set to ramp up its fundraising activities and form a partnership with the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to address a yawning infrastructure gap in African and other developing countries. - Financial Times

For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a majority of Mexicans hold negative views of the United States, according to polling data collected by the Mexico-based firm Buendia & Laredo in collaboration with the Chicago Council of Global Affairs and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that will be released Thursday. - Washington Post​The leftist front-runner in Mexico's presidential election is making light of allegations by his opponents and a top U.S. official that his campaign may have backing from the Kremlin. - Radio Free Europe

Tensions soared along the volatile frontier between India and Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir as soldiers of the rivals continued shelling villages and border posts for third day Friday. - Associated Press​India successfully launched a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Thursday. The nuclear-capable Agni-V ICBM was fired from Abdul Kalam island off the coast of the eastern state of Odisha. - CNBC

Two Forms Of Violent Extremism Pushing Democracies To Warquoting Larry Diamond via Daily Nation (Kenya)Last year tested Africa’s emerging democracies to the limits, but revealed their resilience. But democracy is everywhere haemorrhaging from two forms of violent extremism — one linked to international terrorism and the other to rising opposition authoritarianism — now turning Africa’s rapidly growing young generation into cannon-fodder in post-election disputes.

Suspected Boko Haram fighters have killed at least four soldiers and a civilian in an attack on a military post in Niger’s southeastern Diffa region, local officials and two security sources said on Thursday. - Reuters

A group of Cameroonian activists demanding secession from the French-speaking regions says it’s considering attacks on foreign companies operating in the central African nation. - Bloomberg​Somalia’s Islamist militant group al Shabaab on Thursday denied that it was threatening and abducting civilians to hand over their children for indoctrination and military training. - Reuters

A plan to create a new American-backed, Kurdish-led border force in northeastern Syria has raised alarms in the region that the United States may be helping to cement an autonomous Kurdish enclave that could further divide the country. - New York Times
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Turkey warned the U.S. that the deployment of an American-backed, Kurdish-led force in northern Syria along the Turkish border could cause irreparable harm to the countries’ ties. - Bloomberg

The death of a leading Syrian opposition figure who was wounded in a hit-and-run outside his Damascus home has left his allies shaken and appears to have poisoned an already fractious peace process. - Washington Post

A military bases race is underway between Russia and the U.S. as each nation seeks to expand its presence in Syria and counter asymmetric threats. The U.S. has a military presence in several key locations, but there are two areas with heavy U.S. troop presence that are being transformed to military bases, according to a military source. - Defense News
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said the United States "does not want to keep Syria as a state in its current borders", accusing Washington of seeking to establish a Kurdish-controlled entity along Turkish and Iraqi border zones. - Al Jazeera